Susan Cottrell > Quotes

“People look at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart. If we insist on correcting the outward appearance, we will destroy our child’s heart. Your child’s faith is a precious thing. Don’t let it be destroyed.”
― Susan Cottrell, "Mom, I'm Gay," Revised and Expanded Edition: Loving Your LGBTQ Child and Strengthening Your Faith

“Understand, the word sin in the original context is very different from the one we hear with modern ears, loaded as it is with religious moral overtones added over the centuries. Sin is an archery term that simply means to miss the mark. That’s all. It contains no shame or condemnation. Sins here includes hurts and near misses and wide misses and do-overs. It means that you will miss the mark in any and all of these ways, and love covers it all! Our love for each other is meant to cover it all! What a liberating read of this passage.”
― Susan Cottrell, Radically Included: The Biblical Case for Radical Love and Inclusion: 49 Verses That Will Change Your Life, Change Your Love, and Set Your Heart Free!

“Faith is a precious relationship with God, planted by deeply personal interactions directly with God, fed and watered by hope and joy. Faith is our birthright as human beings created in God’s image. Our beliefs are a different matter. Our beliefs, our rigidly held interpretations, become our prejudice, our harshness, our judgment. Every generation has had to face and dismantle false beliefs about the universe (that the earth is flat), about people (that women are “deformed males”), and about God (that God is all about rules, which Jesus handily dismantles).”
― Susan Cottrell, "Mom, I'm Gay," Revised and Expanded Edition: Loving Your LGBTQ Child and Strengthening Your Faith

“People who pull verses out to prove a point are not interested in an open discussion in which they might be wrong.”
― Susan Cottrell, Radically Included: The Biblical Case for Radical Love and Inclusion: 49 Verses That Will Change Your Life, Change Your Love, and Set Your Heart Free!

“God is not grieved because of “all the homosexuals.” Not in the very least. That’s religious people you’re thinking of. If God is grieved it’s because the beautiful, incomparable message of redemption and grace, the sweet peace of a loving relationship, has been truncated, rerouted into a message of behavior-modification and sin-management. For”
― Susan Cottrell, "Mom, I'm Gay," Revised and Expanded Edition: Loving Your LGBTQ Child and Strengthening Your Faith

“Faith is fragile, we need to protect it.” No one has the right to rip it away. Think about how kind Jesus is, always kind, to the down and out. He does not chide them for their lack of faith but encourages the faith they have. And he defends them from the religious ones imposing standards. To follow Christ is likewise to be kind to those who are struggling and to defend them against the religious ones imposing standards. Jesus had the harshest words for those who would rip away someone’s faith. “If any of you put a stumbling block [literally, “set a trap for them”] before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matt. 18:6). Don’t let that be you.”
― Susan Cottrell, "Mom, I'm Gay," Revised and Expanded Edition: Loving Your LGBTQ Child and Strengthening Your Faith

“DON’T DESTROY YOUR CHILD’S FAITH My Christianity had died the death of a thousand nicks and cuts. —Bart Campolo I’m convinced that it is not the hard things our faith requires of us, some crosses we are unwilling to bear, that destroys our faith. It is the “thousand nicks and cuts” that hack away at us, day after day—the shaming from family, the disdain in our own church, the requirements of the leadership or the youth leader—that make our kids (or us) finally say, “I’m done.”
― Susan Cottrell, "Mom, I'm Gay," Revised and Expanded Edition: Loving Your LGBTQ Child and Strengthening Your Faith

“Now let us move to the New Testament for remaining “clobber passages.” Remarkably, none of these passages are from the Gospels, and none of them are from Jesus.”
― Susan Cottrell, Radically Included: The Biblical Case for Radical Love and Inclusion: 49 Verses That Will Change Your Life, Change Your Love, and Set Your Heart Free!

“For instance, verse 29: “Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip.” Wait a second. This doesn’t sound like any of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender people I know, and I know a lot of them. So maybe this is talking about something else? As always, context is key.”
― Susan Cottrell, Radically Included: The Biblical Case for Radical Love and Inclusion: 49 Verses That Will Change Your Life, Change Your Love, and Set Your Heart Free!